


Adumbrate

by Ezlebe



Series: Runagate [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, M/M, Paparazzi, Smuggler Armitage Hux, Smuggler Kylo Ren, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 02:38:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14154840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezlebe/pseuds/Ezlebe
Summary: “Prince Ben is the Galaxy’s darling, and we all watched him grow,”the announcer says, speaking over a barrage of twisting holos in the same manner they had for everyone other candidate.“Certainly in some places more than others.”Hux feels an eyebrow raise, glued to the screen and watching as a particular image is rotated up to settle at the center: a younger Kylo nods at something a man is saying, wearing loose-fitting trousers and a thin shirt. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, folding his hands in front of his face and then turning to the cam in a wide stance.





	Adumbrate

**_And continuing our countdown, at number three: Prince Ben Organa. We haven’t seen much of him in the past years, but our memories are nearly as long as – well, the holos speak for themselves!”_ **

Hux lifts his head with a crack, leaving the work on the table to stare at the holoscreen in disbelief. He does forget sometimes that Kylo is a legitimate celebrity, or at least was before taking the opportunity of tragedy to fade in obscurity, but hadn’t expected to hear about him on this particular program. He glances sideways at the airlock, mildly wary of Kylo reappearing at just the worst moment – he should be gone for another twenty minutes, but… there is always a chance.

 ** _“Prince Ben is the Galaxy’s darling, and we all watched him grow,”_**  the announcer says, speaking over a barrage of twisting holos in the same manner they had for everyone other candidate.  ** _“Certainly in some places more than others.”_**

Hux feels an eyebrow raise, glued to the screen and watching as a particular image is rotated up to settle at the center: a younger Kylo nods at something a man is saying, wearing loose-fitting trousers and a thin shirt. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, folding his hands in front of his face and then turning to the cam in a wide stance.

It seems that Hux is a sentimental fool, because just moments after feeling vaguely fond while watching Kylo of years ago build beautiful figures of ice in his hands, a jarring, now familiar sound is played, and a soft circle magnifies a certain portion of Kylo’s form that Hux knows intimately. A minor thread of possessiveness strikes through him before quickly being replaced with a quiet, odd second-hand embarrassment, six or so other holos appearing side by side as confirmation of endowment rather than flattering lighting. 

Hux doesn’t usually see Kylo’s cock from this angle, or rather he does and often, but never through a skeevy paparazzo lense in pale trousers. It’s actually rather… flattering, if in a manner that would entirely mortify Kylo. His hatred for the cam droids that followed him as a public figure is hardly unknown, and Hux can only imagine the fallout from the revelation of his featuring on a program like this one. 

 ** _“Prince Ben certainly is a gift to the Galaxy in more ways than one,”_**  the announcer says, sounding wry and fond. Earlier, it was mildly grating, but now it’s the sort of voice that Hux would find a way to strangle if they were face-to-face.  ** _“We can only wait with baited breath for the day he decides to send holos to a lover on an unprotected network.”_**

Hux scoffs under his breath, rolling his eyes and leaning on an elbow as he watches the rest of the program. Kylo should have been first, honestly; the bifurcate cock of a newscaster at number two, or the modified cyber at number one are hardly anything to compare. Intriguing, certainly, but nothing Hux would go out of his way to trade for if he had the option. 

The real thing strides in the door with a discordant bang of the airlock, covered head to toe in black and probably sweating in the heated desert because of it. Hux drags his teeth over his lower lip as an urge suddenly hits him, and quickly flicks his eyes down just before Kylo drags the mask from his face; too many layers to see anything, which is fine. Hux will… likely see it later, though it suddenly seems nothing like the same. 

“Are you really watching that frequency again?” Kylo asks, pulling off his hood and shaking his hair out with the aid of his hands; a skitter of sand falls onto the floor, previously trapped in the folds of the fabric and the curls of his hair. 

“It’s fascinating,” Hux says, subtly leaning up and peeking at the bottom of the screen to see if the name of the previous program is still visible. He leans back when it’s deemed innocuous, dragging his goggles back down his face and grabbing the hand-welder. “The obsessions of high classes with celebrity.”

“Hardly,” Kylo spits, throwing his dirtied overcoat onto the back of a neighboring sofa. “It’s invasive and cruel.”

Hux rolls his eyes at the circuit on the table, shaking his head and trying to concentrate on looking down. He has barely soldered a single pin when Kylo walks over, throwing another layer of his clothing off and onto the ground, sand spilling out everywhere, then falling into the chair with one leg kicked up on an arm. The urge to look is almost startling in its strength, and Hux takes a breath and glances up, trying to be quick about it – 

“What?” Kylo says, eyes narrowing as he opens a sealed juice in his hands. 

“You’re spreading sand everywhere,” Hux mutters, swallowing and looking back down; the trousers are hardly as pale as the varied examples from the program, but an outline was certainly… perceptible. His curiosity is satisfied, hardly any need to investigate further. 

* * *

  
Hux will admit Kylo certainly has a basis for his hatred – the amount of images, articles, and predictions over the course of his life is legitimately astounding. The most recent are addressing his withdrawal, vague implications he’s fallen into his ‘father’s crowd’, and a few tasteless manipulations of the one or two recent holos where he’s recognizable that remove the scar to make him more _agreeable_. 

The older ones are undeniably even worse; if Kylo wasn’t hidden away at school, and sometimes even if he was, then the cam droids were all over him. It seems to have started harmlessly with Senator Organa wanting to retain her status and keep her voice heard among the Galaxy’s turmoil after the fall of the Empire, and little Kylo caught at the claws of the newly reformed free press by virtue of proximity. 

It’s disgusting, honestly, and… Hux is falling right into it. It doesn’t even make sense; the real thing is barely a wall away on the same ship, sleeping now but typically amiable to just about anything, so it’s not as if Hux needs this supplementary material. 

Hux takes a deep breath and taps an image, initiating it to start the holo. He watches as Kylo jumps up to grab a flying disc with the Force, then throw it back with a little too much power –screaming laughter comes from the other court. He hardly cares about that though, eyes drawn distinctly downward and watching, utterly rapt, at the movement within loose trousers. It’s just like it was on the program - utterly, awfully mesmerizing.

Technically, very technically, if anyone could view these pictures without guilt, it’s Hux – or perhaps not zero guilt, but the least amount of it. He gets to see this without being a creep on the holonet, he just… chooses not to at the moment. The fact he saves this one and the next three would probably raise that guilt a few measures more in another person, but he just makes sure to name them something innocuous and place them in a schematics folder that if Kylo finds, he’ll likely just be confused. 

Probably.

* * *

  
17:23  _‘I noticed you liking a lot of my holos. Prince Ben hasn’t been this popular in years.’ >>_

Hux raises an eyebrow, glancing over the top of the holoscreen, then quickly reducing it down to the data pad. He slumps down in his chair, pulling it up to his chest is if he’s trying a different position rather than exchanging odd secrets. It probably doesn’t matter, Kylo embroiled in a fight with M-TK4 in the galley about synth vegetables or something similar, but it never hurts to be careful.

He had only started to follow the paparazzo blog a few days ago, topics mostly musing on contemporary celebrities and their boring lives, but what had drawn his attention was the highly comprehensive collection of Prince Ben holos in the archives. The moderator was an all-inclusive tagger, from locations to dates to colors of clothing, which gently facilitated Hux’s rapid descent into the nightmare that was the quiet, enigmatic Prince Ben between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two.  

The small fact it is Carise Sindian is… more unfortunate. The little that he knows about her is rather deplorable, mostly from the perspective of Senator Organa and Kylo, but to his credit he never expected to be contacted by her.

 _< <’I was recently introduced.’ _17:34

17:36  _‘You’re very discerning. And singu_ _larly focused.’ >>_

 _< <’Some.’_ 17:36

17:26 _‘In the interest of retaining your viewership after you’ve gotten through and saved all the best ones, I’ve been looking for an excuse to dig up some more obscure holos. Interested?’ >>_

Hux raises an eyebrow, biting tightly at his lips and exhaling. The way Sindian is addressing the matter is decidedly weird; the fact she addressed him at all is weird. What does it mean that she has been looking for an excuse?

 _< <’I may be. Are you attempting to sell me something?’_ 17:40

17:41  _‘Goodness, no, I hardly have the need. As I said, only an excuse.’ >>_

17:41 _‘If I were to be frank, I was once mildly infatuated with him like much of the Galaxy. A reason to look again at him is hardly a problem.’ >>_

Hux rolls his eyes, feeling a sneer twisting up at his mouth. He wonders if that was part of her goal cozying up to Organa before it all went bad – endearing Kylo to her for the perfect little Elder House power couple. He knows she was the one who found the revelation of Kylo’s bloodline, and can’t help but be curious of what she thought; though, if it put her off, she seems to have forgotten the reservation. 

 _< <‘It’s not as if he is dead._’ 17:44

17:46  _‘In terms of my little hobby, he may well be a ghost.’ >> _

17:46‘ _Either way, what do you think? You seem rather infatuated yourself. >>_

* * *

  
“Hux,” Kylo says, his voice ringing oddly short and tense; angry in a different manner than usual, like he’s wrestling with confusion. “ _Hux_.”

“Four hells, what?” Hux says, pulling himself to look down at Kylo standing under the duct. 

“Carise Sindian sent you a message.”

Hux freezes, hands held up with wires clutched between fingers in color coded order. “Do you know what it’s about?” 

“It’s a holo of me on a beach in Corellia six years ago,” Kylo says, his voice somehow growing more churlish. “Says she thinks you’d like it.”

“…Ah,” Hux intones, slowly sliding back into the duct with a sharp inhale. Well, today has officially gone from great, with life support threatening to fall around their ears, to wonderful, with Kylo finding that particular message. It’s not even technically to him - it’s to Arim, the droid engineer from Talus.

“Is it a…” Kylo exhales slowly, almost shaky. “Scar thing?”

“No?” Hux mutters, resisting an entirely ill-timed urge to ask to see the holo. He twists wires between his fingers, “If I could be honest – “

“A change,” Kylo mutters, audibly descending into a sulk.

“I don’t know what that means,” Hux says, shoving the electrical cap into it’s hole and lining the hood up to screw it back in place. They haven’t frozen to death yet, so he thinks it’s fixed as it can be while they’re nowhere near a friendly port. “A ‘scar thing’.”

He crawls out of the duct and alights onto the floor, looking over to find Kylo’s face twisted up with frustration. He sighs and reaches up to grab the drivers and leftover caps from the hole, rolling them around his knuckles and glancing to the data pad still clutched in Kylo’s hand.

“My scar,” Kylo snaps, his voice hard. “Pictures of  _me_  without my  _scar_.”

“Oh, no,” Hux says, huffing lowly and lifting his other hand up, gently tapping with his knuckles across Kylo’s cheek, just between said scar and pouting mouth. He drops his hand and reaches for the data pad. “I think it makes you dashing.”

“No,” Kylo says, taking a pair of steps back, visibly tightening his grip on the device. 

Hux reaches for it again, grasping the edges before he gets pushed back by invisible hands, “Kylo!” 

Kylo takes another step back, shifting the data pad behind his back with a defiant lift of his chin. “No.” 

Hux exhales slowly, stopping his reaching and lifting the hand to his forehead, running a few fingers across his brow. “What are you wearing?” 

It seems to pull Kylo up short, and he actually glances down eyes narrowing at his own chest.

“Not right now, you fool,” Hux says, gesturing with a tetchy lift of his chin at the data pad. “In the holo.” 

Kylo takes a short breath, face pinching now with more awkwardness than anger. “Why?”

“Just answer the question,” Hux says, crossing his arms and willing his face not to burst with color. He should’ve kept his assignations with Carise on a separate tablet – a secret one. He’s not sure how he would’ve excused such a waste of credits, but… he could have made room.

“White… swimming briefs,” Kylo says, rolling his eyes to the side with a telling grimace at his lips. 

Hux raises his brows, glancing downward, “And you’re wet?” 

Kylo’s brow furrows and he looks down, tilting the screen until it lights up. “I think so.”

“Well, there’s your answer,” Hux says, speaking quickly and darting forward, only to find himself still kept back. “Give it back. Now.”

Kylo takes another step back, furrowing his brow and exhaling with bewilderment. “You want… dirty pictures of me? Just take them.” 

“It’s really not the same,” Hux mutters, running his tongue along the backs of his teeth in attempt to distract himself. 

“Why?” Kylo snarls, his other hand curling up tight and white-knuckled at his side. 

Hux sneers back, “I don’t have to tell you.”

“It’s about me!” Kylo snaps, lifting his hand and waving the data pad with renewed fervor in front of Hux’s face. “How long have you been getting these?”

“A few weeks. I stumbled upon a… fascinating holo news segment,” Hux says, glaring up at the data pad before rolling his eyes back to Kylo, in disbelief of himself and coughing lowly to clear his throat, “No, that’s giving it credit. It was one of those tasteless countdowns you hate. They were cataloging… certain parts of celebrities, and you were number three. I think you were robbed, personally.”

“You’re flushed.”

Hux is certain his face gets even ruddier, heat prickling from his nape to the crest of his cheeks. “I am uncomfortable.”

“So am I!” Kylo bursts out, gesturing widely and swinging his arms in a manner that calls for concern of the datapad. “You’re getting pictures of my naked chest from one of the most evil women in the Galaxy!”

“Oh, Kylo,” Hux says, taking a deep breath and curling his lips over his teeth. He drags his eyes downward, raising his brows and contemplating grabbing something else, “It wasn’t your chest.”

Kylo is quiet for another moment, mouth twisting in confusion, then gives a gasp like the scandalized highborn he is, “ _What_?!”

Hux tips his head tellingly and shrugs, “It simply… draws the eye.”

Kylo exhales hard, dropping his chin to his chest and closing his eyes for a long, almost ludicrous moment of silence. “You’re saying Sindian collects pictures of my dick?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Hux says, tapping his thigh a few times and turning around, dropping the loose caps into a nearby container; his hand now tattooed with the shape of them. He still hasn’t managed to peek at the holo, and wonders why she sent it so directly; it must be good. “Will you just give it now?”

Kylo looks down at the data pad, expression tense with shifting emotion. It almost looks like he’s going to crush it into pieces, but in the end his shoulders drop, lifting a hand to hold out the data pad. “You’re awful.”

Hux hums his assent, taking the device with a quick grab before Kylo can change his mind, then glancing down to the message at the center. 

13:11 _‘From private Corellian party a few years ago ;) He looks practically criminal!’ >>_

The preview holo is of Kylo half-heartedly waving at someone across a beach, his ass white-clad and characteristically perky above thick thighs, and Hux hums appreciatively before opening the screen to take a full view of it. He raises his eyebrows as he watches Kylo turn and – ah, yes. The briefs are certainly very close fitting, especially with the way the damp makes the fabric give incredibly lewd detail to every sparse centimeter of Kylo’s they’re meant to cover.

“You like this?” Kylo mutters, his voice adjusting down somewhere near a grumble. “Just holos?”

“Well, yes,” Hux says, glancing up from the holo and furrowing his brow. “I’d think you’d be more worried if I didn’t.”

“I mean,” Kylo says, voice trailing off into a long exhale. “I’m in the room.”

Hux shrugs absently, cycling with the swipe of a finger to the next holo in the set. A slightly lower angle; a slightly better view. “I do generally look at them when you’re not.”

Kylo mutters something intelligible under his breath, recognizably mocking, then clears his throat. “You – It…”

“Yes?” Hux says, replaying the particular holo for a second time; it really is quite good, especially with the conveniently sweeping angle. He assumes its more the droid attempting to escape rather than some deliberate artistry. 

“I mean, if you want to fuck me in them, I could – “

“I don’t really,” Hux interrupts, scrolling to the next holo in the set. He’s hardly averse to the idea of it, but it would be different – Kylo would end up taking them off. He’s come to terms with the fact it’s downright voyeuristic, and summarily rationalized that it’s completely normal behavior.

Kylo breathes for a few moments, then suddenly shoves in close, spreading his hands across Hux’s hips; the movement jostles the data pad and shoves it up into Hux’s chest, screen going dark as the selfish physical subject replaces the quiet images, body wide and large, warm with temper, “I’m right in front of you.”

“Why is it so easy to believe that you’d be jealous of yourself?” Hux mutters, awkwardly pulling his arms free and setting the data pad on top of a broad shoulder, mostly to be contrary. 

Kylo responds with a heavy exhale into Hux’s neck, thumbs digging hard into the hollow of his pelvis. He’s got them pinned to the wall, and from the way he reaches down and grabs at the back of Hux’s thighs, pulling upward until there is dirty boots crossed at his back, seems uninclined to act normal any time soon.

“You’ll get over it,” Hux says, flicking backward to the official new favorite and watching the holo cycle through another few times. It is just utterly  _hypnotic_ , but then they all are. Although… “If you’re looking to be involved, none of these have ever shown you hard.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a bunch of old fics on tumblr and I'm just ~~ > here. I have a whole bunch from the pirate au, too, so it might become a real series? Who can know.


End file.
